The walk in is the shortest ever here, ive walked for longer to go cragging in the summer, and it revealed a couple of partys gearing up at the base of the crag. Speaking with the chaps one was heading for the blue John rib and the other to Mam tor gully. A quick look at the old guide book, courtesy of one of the climbers at the crag revealed a route to the right of BJR in a scoop, then there was another prominent rib with no apparent route on it, followed by a second scoop with a line up it.
With all the grades of the routes on this crag being very similar at around II/III, Dan and I decided to have a romp up the central rib. It was holding more snow than BJR and as it still left us a few grades to play with until we'd be out of our league. Im sure the central rib has been climbed winter style before, as the guide hasnt been updated for years, but we broke the trail over to the base of the rib and got going.
We found roughly 3, 30m pitches of III,4 climbing, sticking on the rib all the way. It makes a good, quick, easy accesed climb, and even though in the summer the rock is chossy and fragile here, after a good freeze it firms up rather well and good gear and bomber belays are easily found.
Id imagine the route and the climbing to be pretty much identical to BJR, the length, angle and rock seems almost identical, not to mention the routes are all easily escapable by ledges either side.
Back home i checked on UKC of the routes existance, where it seems the whole face other than BJR is a route called Central Face. Its described as,' the face, right of BJR has a couple of scoops and ribs, climb anywhere'! I believe a clear route for the central rib should be added, and il put it forward to the crag moderator as the route makes a good line, worthy of a *, plus there are already established routes in either scoop.
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